Archive for the ‘Leap of Faith 2013’ Category

As a final event for Maud’s Festival of the Darkroom on November 26 between 12.00 Noon and 4.00pm we worked with Louis Lim to convert the Maud Gallery front room into a public Camera Obscura. We invited members of the Brisbane photo community to join with us for a look back to the origins of photography.

Vicky standing before the two pinhole projection – someone came in and let the light in…

Photographer Neil while making a photograph becomes a camera obscura imaging surface…

Gallery Director Irena takes a tea break…

Cooper+Spowart: 16 years of Camera Obscura Collaborations

In our collaborative work, we are interested in both the physical construct and cultural conventions that inform and shape us. This includes the common rituals and structures that surround, support and transport us in our everyday lives. In this work we have extended the context of documentary photographic methodology to include the narrative potential of the camera obscura and architectural projections.

Bedroom Camera Obscura 2000 (Y2K)

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Avochie Bathroom Camera Obscura

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In the camera obscura work the viewer’s perception of the everyday is spatially challenged. The structures that can form camera obscura are everywhere, but some spaces present themselves as clearly suitable for the making. This could be a city office, a motel room, a country bathroom or even a car. Our work attempts to contextualize the experience of the camera obscura within a concept, space or site. Upon entering the darkened space, the viewer is initially displaced, as the familiar image of the everyday is dim and unrecognizable. Then after time spent in the camera obscura, the image becomes clearer and the familiar is re-established ultimately resulting in a relocation of the observer’s awareness of place.

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City of Dreams – Ibis Hotel sunrise over Sydney

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The Travelodge camera obscura 2008

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Some background on the set-up for the Travelodge camera obscura:

Simple black garbage bags and some black electrical tape from the local 711 store. An aperture cut from a ‘found’ piece of aluminium – size around 8mm … we don’t use sophisticated glass lenses – these are direct light projections. A digital camera bares witness to our experience by capturing the image of the camera obscura projection.

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Blacking out the room

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We were watching TV …

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OUR MOST RECENT CAMERA OBSCURA: ORPHEUS ISLAND BEACH TENT

(A collaborative event with John de Rooy, Spyder Displays and the Orpheus Is Photo Workshop)

Eighteen months ago Toowoomba artist Damien Kamholtz began a project that was to bring together a team of local artists to participate in a conceptual artwork that would have many states and private and public iterations. The first public presentation of the The Memory Collective was at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in August/September 2013.

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Two weeks ago a key element of The Memory Collective project was altered yet again into a new state. This took place near Cabarlah at a symbolic time for Kamholtz, the recent super moon…

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Here is part of the document made on that July evening.

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Damien Kamholtz before the burning Photo: Cooper+Spowart

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The super-moon rising and the embers of the phoenix rising

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Aftermath of the fire

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Aftermath: ashes of the painting the next morning. Photo: Damien Kamholtz

…. this is not an ending for the Memory Collective…

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THE BACKSTORY OF THE MEMORY COLLECTION

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An exhibition of the collaborative artwork as a singlarity

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Memory Collective image from the exhibition @ Toowoomba Regional

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A painting and a performance

The Memory Collective painting by Damien Kamholtz

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The Memory Collective is a multi-disciplinary collaboration orchestrated by artist Damien Kamholtz. Kamholtz states: The Memory Collective Project is a creative collaboration between 12 artists across eight artistic disciplines exploring concepts and themes relating to the human condition such as change, constants, history, refection and memory. The artworks created during the project will make up an exhibition to be held at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in September 2013.

There are different stages to the project. First Kamholtz created a large 2.2 metre square painting, while sculptor, Jessie Wright constructed the large vessel to hold the water. Kamholtz’s painting is embedded with personal meaning in the form of fragments of his past art, the ashes of diaries. In the presence of this artwork we are drawn into a poetic landscape where faces emerge; symbols and totems slip from passive dark spaces and come into conscious awareness.

The second stage of the work was the performance in the form of 9 responses to the painting by Kristy Lee. The painting and the pool created the reflective and reflexive performative space and the transformative process of the original painting then began. Integral to the space were David Usher’s delicate pots; these vessels contained the pallet of shades that then shrouded and clouded the memory of the work. Over the course of the day the painting’s physical form was transformed into something different loosing its current visual form as only a memory.

Our part of the collaboration was to witness, respond and record the transformation of the work over the day. The next stage of the Memory Collective’s work will continue over the next month our component will be to create 9 large collaged photograph memory states of the work for the show in September. Works by others include; a video art piece, a documentary video, a soundscape, interviews, prose and poems. It is a significant project and is being funded by the RADF and supported through the exhibition at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.

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A fragment of photographic memories made by us for the MEMORY COLLECTIVE…

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NEW YEAR’s EVE – A time for freedom from order — a time for fun.

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So we left the big cameras at home and went out with the little Olympus Pens point-n-shoot. No tripod – no big plans – “Bulb” setting, watch, mingle, be a part of the ‘BANG’, ‘Crackle’, ‘POP’ and the gasps and murmur of the crowd.

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These are truly experiments in capturing the experience and essence of a fireworks display in regional Australia … Enjoy!

In 1936, the one-time Bauhaus teacher Làzlò Moholy-Nagy, described his idea of the ‘photographic series’, and he spoke of it as being ‘the logical culmination of photography’. In his discussion he states that the ‘picture loses its identity as such and becomes a detail of assembly, an essential structural element of the whole which is the thing itself.’

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An exhibition, entitled Perv, by Toowoomba artist Jess Martin on show at MARS Gallery would no doubt excite Mohly-Nagy in that she has taken the idea of a photo sequence and turned it into a sculptural form to express her view of contemporary life and photography. Martin has for two years been collecting iPhone images of her life. Last year she exhibited at Futures Gallery in Toowoomba a mosaic of 2,000 of these images in three 1 square metre murals. The theme was her life as a photographer, curious about the visual nature of the world and the access to quick imaging via the mobile phone.

Perv takes the idea further by expanding it to encompass iPhone image submissions sent to her via Facebook social media from friends and their friends …. Deciding to take the concept off the gallery wall where it’s just glanced at by the viewer Martin has constructed a 3-Dimensional space to mirror the image overload of modern life. What’s more, is that the images are suspended the full length and breadth of the Mars space – some 5×10 metres creating a cloud of photo images.

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The view from above

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Who knows how many thousand images are here… who cares? Who measures our daily dose of images anyway? So while this exhibition is confrontational it is also indicative of the prevalence, pervasiveness and proliferation of vernacular photography today. Viewers encountering this sky-load of images will need to search far if they are looking for classic pictorial beauty, or even well crafted documentary images. These pics are rapid snaps — faces, places, events, Facebook trivia, the weird and wonderful, rude and humorous. In a few seconds you can find photos of cats and dogs doing amazing things, food being devoured, over-flashed close-up faces and obviously candid and personal moments between lovers, family and friends.

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Looking at Perv’s pics

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Billions of photographs are made and Perv‘s several thousand may be the equivalent of a grain of sand in all the beaches of the world however within this space we have an opportunity to connect with the contemporary reality of the photo today and the use of this once specialist human activity.

In coming back to Moholy-Nagy again there is something else to ponder that this exhibition celebrates and that is, in Nagy’s words; ‘its separate but inseparable parts a photographic series inspired by a definite purpose can become at once the most potent weapon and the tenderest lyric.’

The exhibition remains on show at Mars Gallery until December 6, 2013.

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Words and photos: Doug Spowart

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Moholy-Nagy, L. (1936). From Pigment to Light. Telehor. 1: 32-36.

Vicky, Jess and Doug

Jess is a past student from Doug’s SQIT Art Photography class. We have mentored her during this project however Jess’ creativity, innovation and hard work has transformed this exhibition into a significant outcome – Congratulations Jess!

It should also be acknowledged that this exhibition has been supported by the Queensland Government through an RADF Arts Queensland Grant.

Our rhythms insert us into a vast and infinitely complex world, which imposes on us experience and the elements of this experience. Let us consider light, for example. We do not perceive it as a waveform carrying corpuscles but as a wonder that metamorphoses things, as an illumination of objects, as a dance on the surface of all that exists.…………

Cooper+Spowart: 16 years of Camera Obscura Collaborations

In our collaborative work, we are interested in both the physical construct and cultural conventions that inform and shape us. This includes the common rituals and structures that surround, support and transport us in our everyday lives. In this work we have extended the context of documentary photographic methodology to include the narrative potential of the camera obscura and architectural projections.

.

Avochie Bathroom Camera Obscura

.

In the camera obscura work the viewer’s perception of the everyday is spatially challenged. The structures that can form camera obscura are everywhere, but some spaces present themselves as clearly suitable for the making. This could be a city office, a motel room, a country bathroom or even a car. Our work attempts to contextualize the experience of the camera obscura within a concept, space or site. Upon entering the darkened space, the viewer is initially displaced, as the familiar image of the everyday is dim and unrecognizable. Then after time spent in the camera obscura, the image becomes clearer and the familiar is re-established ultimately resulting in a relocation of the observer’s awareness of place.

.

City of Dreams – Ibis Hotel sunrise over Sydney

.

The Travelodge camera obscura 2008

.

Some background on the set-up for the Travelodge camera obscura:

Simple black garbage bags and some black electrical tape from the local 711 store. An aperture cut from a ‘found’ piece of aluminium – size around 8mm … we don’t use sophisticated glass lenses – these are direct light projections. A digital camera bares witness to our experience by capturing the image of the camera obscura projection.

.

Blacking out the room

.

We were watching TV …

.

OUR MOST RECENT CAMERA OBSCURA: ORPHEUS ISLAND BEACH TENT

(A collaborative event with John de Rooy, Spyder Displays and the Orpheus Is Photo Workshop)

A new exhibition at the Tweed River Art Gallery presents an exhibition of mail art contributed by artists from all over the world which that deals with the topic of death. Entitled, A Book About Death (ABAD), this exhibition is the most recent iteration of the concept that began in 1963 by Mail Art ‘father’ Ray Johnson – The difference on this occasion being that most of the artists represented in the show are Australian. The coordination and curation of this ABAD exhibition has been overseen by Julie Barrett and Heather Matthew.

The following background information comes from the ABAD website:

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The Australian exhibition is is the 27th exhibition of A Book About Death. Paris based artist Matthew Rose instigated the first A Book About Death exhibition in 2009 in New York. Five hundred artists submitted five hundred copies of their artwork to the exhibition in the Emily Harvey Gallery. On the opening night people came with plastic bags and collected the free artworks and so were able to create their own (unbound) book about death. Many people then went on to exhibit their collections at other galleries and so the exhibition grew into an international phenomena with artists curating their own exhibitions and calling for new artworks to be created for the new exhibitions. Matthew Rose created the exhibition as a tribute to the ‘father’ of mail art Ray Johnson.

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Here’s what Mark Bloch from New York who knew Ray Johnson wrote:

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First and foremost, the American artist Ray Johnson (1927-1995) the founder of the New York Correspondence School deserves all the credit for creating the concept of A Book About Death because he was really onto something when he came up with the concept in 1963. Between March of that year and February 1965, he sent out 13 pages or so of something he called A Book About Death. In framing one piece of a paper as one page of a conceptual book, he anticipated many literary developments of the four decades that have followed. Ray Johnson’s A Book About Death connects to hypertext, cyberpunk, the internet, as well as devices like the Kindle, a device that is an accumulator of electrons that shows its user pictures on a screen of what can be thought of as a book. But the Kindle, one of the possible signposts of what the future of reading will be like, cannot show us an entire book. It can only show us one page at a time.

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Vicky’s contribution to the ABAD exhibition

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Vicky’s statement about the work:

Through the microscope I saw the death of a leaf as a metaphor for the forest.